Lucan St. Croix
Dr. Lucan Heironymous St. Croix, more publicly known as the Ironwright, is a Gilnean-born citizen and self-proclaimed Monster Hunter. Once a scholar and professor of the occult and numerous ulterior and "alternative" religions in Azeroth, he traveled abroad with the Gilneas Brigade alongside Cedric Belcarthe to route enemies of the Alliance, and indeed the world over following the Third War. On occasion the man was appended to one team or another, but largely his work and hunting remained solitary. Lucan's involvement with archaeology and supernatural investigations garnered him a reputation for relentless pursuit and thorough execution. Within the Grand Alliance abroad, recognition for that work has continued, but more goes toward the man's martial applications of his knowledge in the world - the Explorer's League and the Royal Library of Stormwind both recognize his achievements in the fields of material history and his talents at acquiring more of it. Despite his affiliations within the Grand Alliance, Lucan's efforts have gone beyond political borders and factional contentions when mortals are benighted by more palpable evils. Consumed by his traumas during the Third War and beyond, the man burns himself at both ends to eliminate the horrors waiting for mortals in the world's dark corners. Appearance Lucan is a tall, pale man prone to looming and ominous observation. The often disheveled state of his thick, black hair is countered with a groomed, tapered beard wreathing his face. He has the broad shoulders, strong body and barrel chest common to his people, or at least to the general stereotype of your average burly Gilnean. These features carry through to his face; sharp eyes under a heavy brow, an aquiline nose and a thoughtful stare edging on a glower betray deep thoughts and stern regards. His equipment has seen better treatment than he has; golds and blues cover him in a raiment of elegant simplicity and strong craftsmanship. A thin cloak with the same colors hangs over his right arm and side from the pauldron above it. The lot of it is worked over with an engineer's regard. Hidden latches, moving parts and seamless artifice are his mainstays. At his belt are three scroll cases. Thick leather satchels are buckled onto his person with bandoleers and ammunition holsters joining them. Along his thigh is a hunting knife the size of a man's forearm, and on the other leg is a holstered, ornate flintlock pistol. Strapped across his back is a heavy rifle chased in silver, solidly built and primed with all manner of additions to limit the interference between Lucan's eye and its target. Notable beyond all of these things are several charms and fetishes; some bearing sigils of the Light, and others bearing the marks of other, darker faiths. Numbered among them are etched fangs and claws, intricate bones and tethered voodoo dolls all joined with silver wards wrought with mind-aching geometric designs. A full, decorative red crystal vial rests as the centerpiece of them all around his neck. Those who are familiar with these many and varied bijous may understand them to be wards against dark and horrible presences. Should someone catch a glimpse of him with his gloves off or his sleeves rolled up, the backs of his hands begin full sleeves of dark indigo tattoos winding up his arms and beyond. The extent of these depictions is unknown, but they bear an interlocking puzzle of veves, wards, monstrous stylized faces and geometric forms as if to extend the protections and powers worn on his person. Personality Lucan has an air of professionalism toward the general public that can come off as cold at first. Those who've chartered the Ironwright for aid haven't parted with memories of immediate warm greetings or a friendly disposition. Bearing witness to the unspeakable and combating it has left its mark on the man in several ways, the least of which is a methodical, precise front through which he regards the world and its people with doubt and suspicion. Regular drug use with ritual magic has managed to burn the man out, whether to achieve heightened states during his hunts or to self-medicate. Coupled with the struggle to subdue the mental traumas of his experiences, St. Croix is left with a thousand-yard stare and difficulty in forming attachments. Beneath his troubles, however, Lucan continues his efforts out of a sense of duty and human decency. His love of life and nature as they should be both inspire him on to surpass his psychological strife and continue along his chosen path. Ever since he first took up arms with the Brigade alongside Allied forces at Hyjal, the man has endeavored to find some modicum of normalcy in his day to day life. His outlets are treks into the wilderness, namely to go fishing. He enjoys filling journals and the like with sketches of various flora and fauna, and reads voraciously, with a particular fondness for horror novels. Rarely, he allows his fondness for clockwork artifice to bleed over into more civilian pursuits like crafting or repairing timepieces. Background Family Lucan was the middle son to an older sister, Deanna, and a younger brother, Tovel. The three thought nothing of their life in Raven's Wake, a large village in northeastern Gilneas. Toland and Marienne St. Croix were their parents. They were a well-to-do couple that lived within the village and operated throughout Ellingsdale, and they enjoyed a curious life together as two of the few last members of the otherwise defunct Vesaille Concordat before and after bearing children. Deanna lost her life at the tender age of thirteen to the cholera, leaving Lucan to look after Tovel when their parents stole away into the dark. Tovel wanted nothing to do with it all. He took after Toland in more domestic ways, though instead of a pursuit in natural science, he lost himself in the world of politics. At twelve, the height of his life's ambition came in seeking a mentor to introduce him to law. Tovel's ultimate fate remains unknown, though Lucan presumes he likely died sometime during the Worgen outbreak, along with their parents. History Lucan's history is best left to asking him about, should the need or desire ever arise. The man was known throughout numerous academic circles within Lordaeron and Gilneas for his studies into the occult, as well as alterior religious practices among Azeroth's peoples, allied or otherwise, prior to the falls of these kingdoms and his joining of the Gilneas Brigade. Within Stormwind and the Alliance abroad, recognition for that work has continued, however more goes toward the man's martial applications of his knowledge in the world. The Explorer's League and the Royal Library of Stormwind both recognize his achievements in the field of archaeology. Lucan has also accumulated several titles and accolaides for his "adventurous" (read: combative) efforts over the years. Bane of This, Slayer of That, etc. Childhood and Education The St. Croixs seeded the hints of their true work into the children, but it was only Lucan who permitted himself a passing interest for it. In the morning hours and throughout the afternoon, his studies went on for years to understand his father's scientific crafts and his mother's greenwise arts. A love of nature was engendered into the boy, and among Toland's few outdoor qualities, he imparted a thrill for the hunt, and a respect for the taking of life to sustain oneself. Marienne had taught him her spirituality, how to keep home and hearth. Mending wounds and clothes alike, and how to survive with nothing, and to thrive by staying close to the natural world. Toland was a scholar; namely a scientist who poured his life's work into studying the likes of electricity and chemistry, magnetism and worldly forces, in service to the region's distant Duke, Arcturus Ellingsdale I, and thus the crown. At first glance, Toland's life had been quiet and uneventful, as was the man himself, with his balding pate, doughy figure and necrotic pallor. His outbursts were matters of extremity, whether out of anger or celebration, and they were far and few between. His intellect had not made the provision of a fruitless life, however, but it left his time in the world bittersweet for the handful of finds he had to his name, for all the work he had done in the name of science. How he had found such a beauty as Marienne was anyone's guess. For all of Toland's quiet and seemingly sheepish reserve, she was vocal and outgoing, jubilant. Above all, she bore a curious spirit about herself not unlike some errant horuspex or wandering soothsayer looking to scry old bones and bird livers for the promises and pitfalls tomorrow would bring. Wanting for sun herself, she had raucous auburn locks after the fashion of her Stromic kin and a heart born of Man's ancient pagan ways, contrasting greatly with her choice in a husband. What few knew was that she and her husband lived hidden lives. On the surface, she gardened, she sewed, she cooked and cleaned and fussed over the children of Raven's Wake. Toland kept to his sciences and his nature-bound reviews of the wilderness encroaching toward the village's farms. It was when the sun drew its last breath in the day, and the moons emerged with their endless cycles, that the two took up silver honed to a razor's edge, with strange herbs and dusts, and odd contraptions to silently go into that looming dark hand in hand. Once Lucan closed his books for the day, however, his lessons took a stranger turn the older he became. He learned of their efforts in full by his fifteenth year. As time passed, the two brothers were exposed to their parents' nightly sojourns more and more, and to what it was exactly that the two were going after. With a thorough upbringing in the realms of science and mysticism alike, Toland and Marienne took their eldest son on his first Hunt when he was sixteen, to kill an ogre shaman named Hag'kar that had settled into the mountainous region north of Saelborough. Though he nearly lost his life against the creature, the family killed it and inducted Lucan into the traditions of the Vesaille officially. The Scholarly Years Life remained quiet after Hag'kar was rooted out. Over the years, concerns emerged across Gilneas involving stray and isolated members of the Horde's more sorcerous elements managing to sneak into the otherwise untouched kingdom. Beside these incidents were the ever-present shades of the nation's past emerging to haunt the people or torment the wild reaches of Greymane's jurisdiction. Though Toland and Marienne continued to keep themselves ready, Lucan was drifting further away from the family's tradition, even in light of the history Toland would recount when House St. Croix presided over the whole of Raven's Wake, and waged its shadow wars against unnatural threats to Gilneas. In the stead of these romanticized pursuits, Lucan drifted into Academia. Through the universities across Gilneas and contacts that his father had made in scientific circles, he was able to earn degrees and papers through disciplines of studying antiquity and ancient religions, history and the occult by way of magic. Though Lucan himself demonstrated no desire to kindle any sort of magical aptitude, he studied alongside priests, mages and Harvest Witches alike. During these studies, he met Cedric Belcarthe, and the two discovered they had more in common than not despite their backgrounds. Their friendship arose away from their studies, when the two would go pubbing in the Capital or lose themselves at Balls for a taste of High Society, and moreso during reclusive walks through the Blackwald. It was during the sojourns into the ancient forest that Cedric told Lucan of the dark arts being practiced in secret throughout small covens at home and abroad; not shadow magic, nor bleaker aspects of druidism, but tampering with Fel. In exchange for his silence, Lucan was allowed to sit in on these studies and rituals wherever Cedric was. For his effort, Lucan told Cedric of his family's past in actively pursuing and destroying such machinations. In their growing brotherhood, the two pledged to unravel these corruptions - Cedric, by practice and understanding, and Lucan through his hunts. Together they made a good, fledgling team in the small hours of the day. In the public eye, the two pursued their studies and only interacted through civilian contexts. The two found their therapy from it all by getting lost in the wilderness and hunting elk in Colwaithe. As they grew older, Lucan settled into his professorship and traveling from Gilneas and Lordaeron to Dalaran to conduct his lectures. The trips had grown fewer and further apart, and talk of isolationism had grown in Gilneas, which St. Croix himself thought foolish and ultimately destructive. His opinions were solidified when his then-fiance, Ophelia Harsten, was killed by the crown's men during a riot. Cedric brought word to Lucan of threats beyond their kingdom's borders, and announced his departure for the Gilneas Brigade to fight the world's threats abroad, starting with a westward journey to Kalimdor. Not one to leave his brother in arms, Lucan abandoned his lecture halls and fealty, and joined the Brigade as well. The Third War and Conflict Abroad With only a few books and his rifle, Lucan threw himself headlong into the war in its final days as Jaina Proudmoore established Theramore. While she sought peace with Thrall's Horde, Lucan was dubious toward the growing coalition of orcs, trolls and all else. The Battle of Hyjal was a life-changing experience for the man. Never had he seen such horrors, and while he couldn't entirely avoid the dark forces his family fought against in the past, now he decided to actively pursue them. With access to the technology that the gnomes and dwarves brought with them, Lucan outfitted himself in the field with all manner of new creations at his disposal, often in a moment's notice to lash together a devastating, albeit ramshackle, solution to any given problem. In this, the people around him began calling him the Ironwright, which was more an honorific from the dwarves for his ingenuity and keen wit with field repairs. The name stuck as Lucan made it a point to rely on his upbringing in the sciences against more corporeal threats. Belcarthe had advised he keep the nickname and withhold his true name, as many varieties of black magic relied on the invocation and abuse of such to gain power over a person and their soul. The title stuck from then on, and St. Croix only made the provision of his name to people he trusted. When the dust settled from Hyjal, Cedric cornered Lucan about his growing use of black magic. Belcarthe, for his part, made a vow to always work against, and to never succumb, to those dark forces. Lucan in turn promised that should Cedric ever lose himself, he would keep watch for signs of corruption and personally end his misery if it came to that. In the years that followed, the two made their residence wherever the Alliance's banners flew. Battle took them from Kalimdor to the Eastern Kingdoms and back, through Stormwind, Ironforge and Darnassus. They braved Outland, waged war across Northrend and often found themselves clashing with the Horde as hostilities between the factions grew. They gained their titles and renown, away from nobility and all of its pomp and circumstance. The two were convinced they could do true good for the world without their ties, and yet they'd always held memories of Gilneas close to heart. The Shattering When Deathwing rose from the depths and ravaged the world, Lucan and Cedric were drawn homeward at last. They found the Greymane Wall destroyed, and the land overrun with worgen. The Forsaken were yet salivating at the kingdom's borders. Here, their paths parted. Lucan went in search of his family, and anyone he knew who might still be alive. Cedric went to see to Saelborough and its survivors. St. Croix discovered the bodies of his parents holed up in their house, and was overwhelmed with the grief that he'd never truly said his goodbyes to them. His younger brother, Tovel, was nowhere to be found. Lucan discovered that an old contact still lived, albeit leagues away, as part of a group of refugees who went on to establish a town called Surwich, far to the southeast along the coast of the Blasted Lands. As conflicts waged across the world, St. Croix bade Belcarthe farewell and threw himself into the fray again to find the estranged occultist, Hendrick Olsen. Be the Quill, and I the Parchment After months of searching, Lucan found Hendrick outside of Surwich. There, in a seaside lodge at the edge of the red wastes, Olsen was seemingly waiting for Lucan to finally arrive. His faith was well-placed, and St. Croix arrived to find the man much as he'd always been - one of the Vesaille's most knowledgeable and undesired members. Olsen was inducted into the darker aspects of magic from a young age. Youngest in a roving band of gypsies, they were ostracized and driven from one settlement to the next for their works. Hendrick took in whatever strange mysticism and sorcery he could in his fledgling years, and finally applied his expertise with the Concordat throughout his adulthood. Lucan first met him before the Third War, and he was well into his thirties then. By the time they met again, he found the man had taken a Darkspear, Di'nankavi, for a wife and somehow cultivated a practice of information brokering in the middle of a vast and bleak nowhere. Now the man was bald from head to toe, and his skin was covered in all the warding and protecting symbols it could hold, from numerous faiths and arcane arts. Amidst the odd couple, St. Croix was able to mentally regroup and prepare himself for the chaos unfolding across the world. It was Hendrick's wife who gave Lucan a hexed, fateful brew that opened his eyes fully to the world of spirits, to witness wrongdoings and injustices of the most horrid sort. She claimed it would aid his undying war. In the end it left him with unrelenting hallucinations and recurring nightmares. While the brew was only meant as a temporary boon for Shadow Hunters, its potency proved overwhelming to a human. Struggling to blunt and supplement the intensity of her handiwork, Hendrick devised a means of protecting Lucan from the darkness he was now damned to combat. Through another ritual that took days, St. Croix was laid flat as Olsen took up enchanted inks and teeth honed to a razor's edge. When the work was done, Lucan was left with patterns from his neck to his feet, across his shoulders and back, and down along his limbs. While they spared his head, chest and abdomen, they interwove and created a network of warding seals and grotesque faces meant to drive off unwanted forces. Like a blade worked and beaten at the forge, Hendrick released Lucan into the Blasted Lands two weeks later. Healed and drugged, St. Croix staggered into the daylight with new tools at his disposal. Olsen armed and armored his old colleague with his hoard of knowledge and insight, and so Lucan brought these "gifts" to bear against the Twilight's Hammer. The Rolling Mists While many expeditions launched for the mysterious continent of Pandaria, Lucan was nowhere for it. When the threat of Deathwing had passed, he returned to Saelborough a proud but beaten man. Haggard from his experiences across the Twilight Highlands and rushing from continent to continent, he was ready to go home and work toward honing his new and questionably desired abilities. Sadly, for the strengths it gave him, his senses and perception were overwhelmed. Lucan found solace in strange beds and stranger bottles, in those herbs he could smoke himself into oblivion with and a disregard for his own existence beyond the Hunt and his own fleshly satisfactions. Cedric relied on Lucan to help him revive and solidify Saelborough, as the rest of Ellingsdale was lost to the enemies of Gilneas then, from within and without. For his part, St. Croix proved to be vicious and unforgiving to the threats that plagued the earldom. Because of his contributions, Belcarthe's standing, marshaled bannermen were able to sweep through and resolve Saelborough's more corporeal threats as the Ironwright took point, often single-handedly, against the dark unknowns. It was a debt Cedric couldn't repay, and while it was crushing for him to see his friend fall into such decay through the succor of addictions to dull the waking horrors of his work, he needed Lucan to continue on. In the time Saelborough had become a March proper, the two managed to ease St. Croix away from his addictions and to manage the seething demands for justice and retribution in his mind's eye. Lucan still kept to his vices. Drinking, odd pipeweeds, hallucinogens and philandering were his mainstays, though he did manage to stop for a handful of ill-fated relationships. None were as ill-fated as his friendship with Cedric's old flame, the mage Chiara Bellafiore. The Broken Clock In the past, Chiara, Lucan and Cedric had always looked out for one another. While their adventures were rare, the three were known to band together for problems neither of them could resolve alone or even in a pair. One such fated duet between St. Croix and the mage got them lost across history, from the rise of Strom to the height of Karazhan, in order to resolve a break in Chiara's timeline. With the dangers of chronomancy, her history had become distorted, and she feared for the apparent stop she sensed in the near future, upon the emergence of the Timeless Isle. Trapped in the past, the two were gone for what seemed like only moments, where years had transpired as the two wrestled to find a means of establishing a tether that took them back to their native time and space. Worn and hardened from their trek across history, Lucan's arrival left his senses and spirits broken and agitated. They found the cause for Chiara's fractured time as they took flight from the modern ruins of Karazhan - the Dark Portal had reopened, and the collision of an alternate Draenor with their reality shattered her grasp of time. As Lucan left to inform Cedric of the Iron Horde's invasion, Chiara worked to anchor herself again to no avail. Into Draenor Upon returning to Saelborough, Lucan brought news of this Iron Horde to Cedric. Belcarthe gathered the forces within Saelborough and launched to make a full assault against the orcs at the Portal. Both he and Lucan were fearful of the First War's events repeating themselves, and neither man batted an eye at the prospect that they might not be able to return to Azeroth again. After the initial assault, the then-Baron settled his incursion force between the western mountains and forests of Shadowmoon Valley, just shy of Talador. He called the hold New Saelborough, and soon began to receive slightly-above token support from the Alliance. Though the garrison had weathered several attacks and survived, its resources had been taxed throughout the war. Chiara was sent back with her and Cedric's newborn son, Abraham, along with Lucan to keep watch over them. For his part, Lucan felt that the potential sacrifice of losing their homes forever was wasted when the journey had become a mere matter of stronger portals between times and worlds. While he was happy to return, the world seemed more dull to him, and so he found himself lost in old habits. St. Croix began to work in earnest as an investigator with the civil police forces throughout Allied cities such as Gilneas, Stormwind, Ironforge and Darnassus. His work specifically entailed the supernatural and inexplicable, and several cold cases, criminal acts and cult assemblies across the Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor were thwarted due to his efforts with the standing guards. In between these investigations, Lucan managed to find himself doing mercenary work. Even though he hated it, he found it lucrative and found himself doing a fair bit of treasure hunting, some of which had been back across Draenor. When he'd heard that plans were in motion back in Gilneas for regrowth and reclamation, he abandoned these efforts and returned to Saelborough. The Reclamation of Ellingsdale Cedric had grand designs and new allegiances when he returned from Draenor. The newly-pronounced Margrave had his sliver of Ellingsdale to work with, and so he gathered his allies, St. Croix included, and began those motions in earnest to finally drive the Forsaken and Ferals out of the Duchy and rebuild it in full. Lucan's part came in unseating the corrupting influences throughout each earldom. From Colwaithe to Bann Enther, St. Croix had a solitary campaign to locate and eliminate the powers that be who laid claim to every abandoned village, town and hovel across the breadth of Ellingsdale. Every time the combined forces under Cedric's command made way into a region, St. Croix was one step ahead to isolate and sow chaos among the opposition's leadership. This tactic, at least in utilizing Lucan's capabilities, proved to be effective, if not dangerous for the man. The Ironwright was in over his head more often than not, and while the aid given to him was rudimentary at best, he built a network of informants across the territories they reclaimed that still stands well after reconstruction and settlement. After the final battle at Sheremont against Mandrane Belcarthe and his rogue Forsaken, there were still problems that needed addressing. Errant cultists of the regional pagan gods hid and regrouped in the shadows, and both the undead and maddened worgen in the area proved tenacious in being fully eliminated. Despite these complications, Cedric had to delegate new leadership to the earldoms in Ellingsdale. Lucan was chosen as the new earl of Saelborough, much to his chagrin. With a hatred for politics and an overarching impatience for bickering and pleasantries alike, he begrudgingly accepted his position and does as much as possible in his office so as to avoid being within Saelborough Town's main hall for more than a day at a time. Category:Characters Category:Gilnean Category:Engineers Category:Human Category:Hunters